We created Changeist to build pathways to social changemaking.

Young people are not deficient. They are not things for us to fix. They are our greatest resource, just waiting to be tapped.

When I was 20, I served a year with AmeriCorps. I was thrust onto a team that challenged my worldview and helped me find my voice through serving others.  That service year led me down a path of over a decade of leadership and civic activism. In 2013, as I was reflecting on my work and career, I asked myself: what if I had a service year when I was 11?  How different would my life be? 

To answer that question, I built Changeist. We are empowering the next generation of leaders—a pipeline of enthusiastic and informed changemakers. To date, our community has collectively served over 80,000 hours, completing hundreds of local projects to make our neighborhoods places where we can truly thrive. Yet, for many of our young community members, Changeist is the first space in their lives where their voice is valued, where they are viewed by peers and adults as having the potential to change the world.

— Mario Fedelin, Founder and CEO
2019 Obama Foundation Fellow

We take a youth-centered approach.

Changeist brings together young people outside of school and across neighborhoods to learn a common civic language, engage in dialogue, and build community to investigate local and national challenges ranging from poverty to environmental issues.

Over the course of our program year, we focus on increasing youths civic knowledge and personal agency. We:

Place youth on diverse teams, utilizing a near-peer mentor structure;

Address concerns of cultural competency by exposing youth to different groups, perspectives, cultures, and ideas that they may not otherwise have access to;

Give youth the space to learn and practice civic leadership skills, such as public speaking, conflict resolution, and team leadership;

Provide the resources to explore, serve, and reflect on community issues;

Provide a place to implement local solutions to local problems, so that youth can immediately see how their actions can have a positive impact on the community, setting the stage for future action;

Complete youth-led service projects;

Partner with community-based organizations to learn from and volunteer with agencies, witnessing issues first-hand.

By engaging young leaders with each other, with California’s critical issues, and with local agencies working toward solutions, Changeist is building pathways for social changemaking.